EMQ » April – July 2025 » Volume 61 Issue 2

Topic: New Models of Mission 

Summary: As the Great Commission requires us to reach all peoples of the earth with the gospel, we need to address intentionally the shortfall of workers focused on the unreached. Richard Lewis provides conceptual tools to help analyze the shortfall. He classifies missionaries, then analyzes their distribution according to ministry context and difficulty. This may be helpful for evaluating and planning missionary deployment.

By Richard G. Lewis

Fifty years ago, James Engel and Wilbert Norton published What’s Gone Wrong With The Harvest,[i] with a message that remains deeply relevant today. More than 2,000 years have passed since Jesus told his disciples, “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35, ESV). Yet, despite our vast resources, advanced technology, and the presence of the Holy Spirit, over 42.4% of the world’s population has never heard the gospel.[ii] What has gone wrong with the harvest?

Most Christian missionary efforts (around 97%) focus on regions or populations already exposed to Christianity in some form.[iii] These are places that are reached. That is, at least 2% of the population already identify as Christians.[iv] Admittedly, this does not mean that all are committed or practicing believers. Many individuals in reached areas may be nominal or cultural Christians. Ongoing missionary work in these regions often involves deepening the faith of existing believers as well as reaching out to those who have had limited exposure to Christianity.

The unreached are not just regions of the world. They are also groups of people. For example, although Kenya claims to be 85% Christian,[v] little, if any pioneer work is being done among Muslims on the coast or Somalis living in Nairobi. Many of my students in India are preparing to be Bible teachers or pastors among their own ethnic/caste group, rather than preparing to engage with Hindus or Muslims living in their home areas. While evangelical churches in Kansas City send missionaries overseas, there are also 35,000 Muslims[vi] and nearly 7,000 Hindus[vii] that need to hear the gospel in Kansas City itself. Every local church should do cross-cultural training and dedicate resources — both financial and human — toward reaching the unreached.

There are many reasons why people are unreached, including political and religious restrictions. The church, worldwide, seems to have adopted the idea that difficult means impossible. Rather than find ways to access the unreached, workers more often go “where God is moving,” serving where unbelievers can readily hear the gospel. As a result, most Christian ministry occurs among those who already have an opportunity to hear about Jesus.

Missionary Type

Not all cross-cultural workers are the same. There are five different types of missionaries: pioneer, grower, insider, entrepreneurial expat, and non-resident instructor. Each carries out mission work in different ways. Table 1 provides a broad outline of the work of missions. Individuals may work as different types of missionaries at different times in their missionary careers.

Missionary Type	Function	Outcome
Pioneer	Breaking New Ground	Actively working in unreached areas.
Grower	Growing established seed	Supporting the existing church
Insider	Witnessing from within unreached groups	Establishing underground fellowships
Entrepreneurial Expat	Witnessing while doing other work	Discreetly aiding Insiders
Non-Resident Instructor (NRI)	Serving Insiders	Supplying scriptural tools for Insider ministry

Table 1 – Missionary type, function, and outcome

Pioneers focus on regions with little to no Christian presence, often serving in unreached areas. Their mission involves reaching people groups who have minimal or no exposure to Christianity.

Growers represent the majority of today’s missionaries. These individuals disciple believers and foster church growth within established Christian communities. Examples of growers are Bible or seminary teachers, youth workers, those who run children’s programs within the national church, or people setting up social media programs for outreach from within established churches.

Insiders are a distinct group of Christ followers who emerge from non-Christian backgrounds. They serve as witnesses within their own communities, often discreetly. Insiders develop hidden networks of community. I recently saw such a network among Somali Muslim background believers (MBBs) in Kenya. Insiders are able to navigate their cultural and social contexts in ways outsiders cannot.

Entrepreneurial expats (EE) work with unreached groups in restricted access countries. In these countries, open evangelism is prohibited. One approach to this work is the business as mission (BAM) model. In BAM, individuals serve as witnesses while doing legitimate business activities. This allows them to share their faith in places where it is illegal to do so openly. These EEs may work as teachers, social workers, and even sport coaches, while at the same time encouraging the underground church.

Non-resident instructors (NRI) are individuals who cannot personally enter restricted areas. However, they actively support and collaborate with those living there. Many NRIs have previously lived cross-culturally. They often have significant expertise in training national workers within that cultural context. Through their partnership and support, they help advance the gospel in regions that are otherwise inaccessible to them.

My journey in missions began fifty years ago as a pioneer. I served in the far northwest bush of Kenya, working among two unreached tribal groups. As congregations matured and national leadership emerged, my role transitioned into that of a grower, focusing on discipling and supporting church growth. Over time, I have become more of an NRI, partnering with pioneers and insiders from Muslim and Hindu backgrounds. My role is to support and empower their mission efforts.

Spiritual Condition and Relative Difficulty of Ministry

The Resistance-Receptivity Axis[viii] shown in Table 2 is a helpful framework for classifying individuals and groups based on their openness to the gospel. It ranges from highly resistant to highly receptive. This scale helps missionaries understand the spiritual condition of different groups and tailor their outreach strategies accordingly.

Highly resistant to the gospel									Highly receptive to the gospel
-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5
strongly oppose		somewhat oppose		indifferent			somewhat favorable		strongly favorable

Table 2 – The Resistance-Receptivity Axis

The people most strongly opposed to the gospel (-5) include some Muslim groups in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as Buddhists and Hindus in Asia. These groups are not only resistant to the message of Christ but are often openly hostile toward those who proclaim the gospel. This hostility can manifest in various ways, including persecution and violent opposition. This makes evangelistic efforts particularly challenging in these regions.

Those who are a little less strongly opposed (-4) are typically not hostile toward Christians. They have limited contact with followers of Christ and are often not open to discussions about the Christian faith. Many Muslims in countries like Senegal or Mali, for example, may identify as Muslim by birth and tradition and have little openness to exploring beliefs beyond the Islam they have grown up with. These individuals are typically indifferent or uninterested in engaging with other religious perspectives. Although they are not outrightly hostile, this makes evangelism more difficult.

Somewhat opposed (-3) individuals live in regions where Christianity is present and accessible. They may not be seeking faith actively but are sometimes open to listening to the gospel message. Secular Europe, where many people have traditional church affiliation but no active Christian faith, and certain regions of India, where Christian communities have existed for centuries, often fall into this category.

The remainder of the Axis scale, ranging from -2 to +5, is familiar to most Christians. Where people are more open to the gospel (+1 to +5), the mission focus tends to shift toward attracting people to meetings, direct evangelism, discipleship, and church planting.

Matching Missionary Type with Ministry Condition

Where people are highly resistant to the gospel, the work of sharing the gospel, here defined as mission ministry, is hard. If the gospel is viewed more favorably, mission ministry is soft. I am using soft rather than easy as all ministry has its challenges.

Hard ministry refers to the regions of the world where the gospel faces significant barriers, including resistance, hostility, or restricted access. They are often the focus of pioneering efforts. They are also the most demanding for missionaries.

Medium ministry refers to regions where there is opportunity for a gospel breakthrough, despite existing religious or cultural barriers. Many areas in Eastern Europe and Latin America, though predominantly influenced by Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, or Secularism, still offer possibilities for outreach. These people are open to engaging with the gospel, though perhaps reluctantly. They are open to evangelistic efforts. Relationship-building can lead to spiritual transformation.

Soft ministry refers to those places and people where mission activity is primarily supportive of existing churches and parachurch organizations. Much of this mission ministry occurs in regions of the world where there is a substantial Christian presence.

Table 3 shows the relationship between mission ministry, missionary type, and people’s receptivity to the gospel. It shows what type of missionary suits different situations.

Mission ministry	Hard	Medium	Soft
Axis classification	-5, -4	-3 – -1	0 – +5
People’s openness to the gospel	highly resistant to hearing the gospel	neutral interested seeking	in the process of making a decisionopen to be discipledgrowing in Faithmaturing in faith
Missionary type	Pioneer/Insider/EE/NRI	Pioneer	Grower

Table 3 – Relationship between mission activity and people’s receptivity

One problem relating to “what’s gone wrong with the harvest” is not where missionaries serve, but what they do. Figure 1 shows the relative distribution of missionaries according to mission ministry category. I am not aware of any research exploring this type of missionary distribution. These numbers are based on my personal experience working with two missionary-sending agencies, engaging in discussions with sending churches and mission committees, visiting over sixty countries, and partnering with seminaries and national mission organizations for nearly five decades. I encourage the global mission community to evaluate their outreach programs and personnel to draw their own conclusions. While some organizations emphasize sending pioneer church planters, in practice, these cross-cultural workers may be involved in social programs or serving among already evangelized populations. If just 12,000 out of 400,000 missionaries worldwide are reaching the unreached,[ix] this analysis is fairly accurate.

Figure 1 – Distribution of missionaries according to mission ministry

Table 4 analyzes the activities of missionaries according to mission ministry category. Church planters establish new groups of believers. Not all missionaries are church planters, especially in unreached areas.[x]

The command of our Lord to “make disciples” (Matthew 28:19) can certainly lead to the establishment of new congregations. Missionaries who serve established congregations no doubt expect churches to be planted and new missionaries sent out. However, that work is different from the Apostle Paul, who made it his mission to go to people and places where Christ was not yet known (Romans 15:20). New churches planted in areas where there are other churches fall into the mediumcategory. In many places where mission ministry is hard, there are few, if any, believers in the region. Many of those churches are house fellowships and may be meeting in secret.

Theologians and Bible teachers are more commonly found in mission fields that are classified as medium or soft. However, in more challenging contexts, their role may take on the form of pioneer work.

Social work appears in all three categories of mission ministry. Activities such as feeding programs, digging wells, and medical care are often the first steps in building longer-term relationships with highly resistant people. However, in hard areas, social programs are often viewed with suspicion and restricted. This can limit their effectiveness in sharing the gospel. In response to the great human need encountered in any ministry context, social work often multiplies alongside or independent of specific gospel ministry.

The categorization of media depends on the intent. If it is geared to getting the message to the unreached, it is a great resource for those involved in hard mission ministry. It may be the only option for some physically inaccessible unreached people to hear the gospel.

The ministry activities listed in the soft category are largely self-explanatory. As stated before, most missionary activity focuses on these programs. They are well known to most Christians and easy to understand in both their purpose and significance. As one pastor told me, “My congregation understands filling shoeboxes with toys at Christmas time. They don’t understand cross-cultural church planting.”

	Hard	medium	Soft
Church planting and evangelism	✓	✓
Bible teachers		✓
Building projects			✓
Schools for children			✓
Children’s ministry			✓
Facilitators	✓	✓
Youth camps			✓
Short-term programs			✓
Social work	✓	✓	✓
Administrators			✓
Orphanages			✓
Bible translators		✓
Businesses missions	✓
Counsellors			✓
Radio/TV/social media	✓	✓

Table 4 – Missionary activity categorized by mission ministry

Conclusion

By highlighting that most mission activities and resources are directed toward the most reached peoples of the world, it is not my intention to diminish the work of missionaries in medium or soft mission ministry. God is sovereign. He uses a variety of efforts to draw people to himself.

The key to addressing the harvest problem is intentionality. The strategies for ministry that growers use are different than those used by pioneers. This is because of the difference in receptivity of the people they interact with. As Donald McGavran pointed out, the unreached will not easily cross-cultural boundaries to hear the gospel.[xi] Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus are unlikely to attend Christian churches, no matter how appealing they may be to existing members. Reaching the 3.4 billion people without the gospel[xii] will require more missionaries being sent out as pioneers. If we are to solve the harvest problem, we must correct the imbalance between those working among highly receptive versus highly resistant people. How else will the unreached hear what Jesus has done for them?

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[i] James F. Engel and Wilbert Norton, What’s Gone Wrong With the Harvest?: A Communication Strategy for the Church and World Evangelization (Zondervan, 1975).

[ii] The Traveling Team, “Needs of the World: The Harvest is Plentiful, the Laborers are Few,” accessed February 19, 2025, https://www.thetravelingteam.org/articles/the-harvest-is-plentiful-the-laborers-are-few.

[iii] The Traveling Team, “Mission Stats: The Current State of the World,” accessed February 19, 2025, https://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats.

[iv] “Mission Stats.”

[v] US Department of State, “2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: Kenya,” accessed February 19, 2025, https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/kenya/.

[vi] IqraSense,  “Muslims in Kansas City, Missouri USA – Islamic Centers and Mosques,” IqraSense, accessed February 27, 2025, https://www.iqrasense.com/islam-in-america/muslims-in-kansas-city-missouri-usa-islamic-centers-and-mosques.html.

[vii] IMB, “Kansas City, MO,” PeopleGroups.info, accessed February 27, 2025, https://www.peoplegroups.info/site/MetroHighlight/id/28140/name/Kansas+City.

[viii] Edward R. Dayton, That Everyone May Hear (MARC, 1980), reproduced in Peter Wagner, Strategies for Church Growth: Tools for Effective Missions and Evangelism (Regal, 1987).

[ix] David Platt, “Great Commission Statistics that Should Concern Us,” Radical, May 5, 2021, https://radical.net/article/great-commission-statistics-concern/.

[x] “Mission Stats.”

[xi] Donald A. McGavran, The Bridges of God: A Study in the Strategy of Missions (Friendship Press, 1955).

[xii] Joshua Project, https://www.joshuaproject.net/.

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EMQ, Volume 61, Issue 2. Copyright © 2025 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.